Desktop cut-sheet laser printers have been commonly used to print a variety of booklets or pamphlets, such as scripts in the retail pharmacy industry in support of prescription fills. Processing these documents is time consuming, wasteful and unreliable using the cut-sheet laser printers, as sheet skew, page jams, and mis-feeds are common problems associated with the cut-sheet laser printers, especially when printing in duplex mode (i.e., on both sides of the sheet). In addition, the cut-sheet desktop laser printers typically rely upon fixed-length sheets (e.g., letter size—8½″×11″ and legal size—8½″×14″) to print variable amounts of data. As such, fixed-length sheets usually have a limited amount of space available for variable data printing. This necessarily leads to an increase in sheet consumption, as full sheets are used to print partial amounts of data. Furthermore, in regard to the retail pharmacy industry, as the sheets for each script and for the scripts of the different prescription fills are by definition printed on separate sheets, there is a great possibility for misplacement and loss of the sheets, as well as an increased probability that the sheets may end up in the wrong hands. The latter is of concern as the scripts may contain personal and/or confidential information.
In view of the foregoing, fanfold media (e.g., media that is cross-perforated and/or folded alternately in accordion fashion to form a plurality of panels) may be used with, for example, dot-matrix or thermal printers, to print or image documents (e.g., booklets or pamphlets) of various sizes. However, in such case as the amount of data (e.g., panels) printed may vary from document to document (e.g., booklet or pamphlet), the first or front panel (e.g., first sheet or page of the first of front panel) of any particular document may open to the wrong side (e.g., from left to right instead of right to left) making use of such document difficult and/or inconvenient. Worse yet, the first sheet (page) of the front panel of such a document may fanfold to the interior of the printed document based on its original fan-folded orientation. Furthermore, as the data transmissions for documents are generally printed in the first-in-first-out (FIFO) fashion, the panel which is printed first invariably ends up fan-folding to the bottom of the particular pamphlet followed by other panels. Because such fan-folded documents may open to the wrong side, may have their first or front panel fanfold to the interior, and the first or front panel invariably fanfolds to the bottom, printing is inconsistent and inconvenient, and further requires greater handling, especially in the retail pharmacy industry.